Baltimore Ballot Mistake Leads To Uncountable Votes: Report

BALTIMORE, MD – Due to an error on ballots mailed to voters in the city’s District 1, inaccurate City Council election results have occurred and the votes cannot be counted, according to the State Board of Elections.

The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday that two Democrats in the City Council race, incumbent Zeke Cohen and challenger Paris Bienert, expressed concerns over early results in Tuesday’s election. Early returns showed that Cohen had only garnered 39 votes while Beinert had collected 1,882. Those results, the Sun reported, showed only results from mail-in ballots that had been tallied on Monday.

The State Board of Elections issued a statement Wednesday stating that Maryland’s mail vendor, SeaChange, failed to correct an error in the ballot title for City Council. Election officials asked the vendor to correct the error, which was discovered during a proof-reading process prior to the ballots being printed.

“While the error was corrected in the official voting database, the error was not corrected on a portion of the ballots that were mailed to voters in District 1,” the state Board of Elections said in the statement. “Due to this inconsistency, vote by mail ballot styles for District 1 could not be counted properly.”

According to the Sun, the mistake also appears to have impacted the race for circuit court judge and state election officials are investigating whether any ballots outside of District 1 were impacted. As of 2 a.m. Wednesday, early returns for Baltimore were no longer being listed on the state elections website and were marked as “NR” for not reported.